THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 52, VOLUME 82
THE DILEMA THAT IS GAZA
by Morgan Strong , Consortium News





















The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has returned to the news, as Israeli warplanes blasted away Saturday at security compounds in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing at least 155 and wounding more than 310, according to news accounts. The Israelis said they were retaliating against rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Given this new crisis, we are republishing a first-person account by former “60 Minutes” consultant Morgan Strong about the tragedy that is Gaza:

Gaza was and is an anomaly, a piece of land left over from the calamity of history, created it seems in a moment of distraction.


It was once Egyptian, then Ottoman, then British, then Israeli, now Palestinian. In truth no one quite knows what to do with – or what to do about – Gaza.

The Palestine Liberation Organization governed Gaza most recently, but did nothing to ease the burden of the wretched existence of Gaza’s 1.4 million people.

Arafat built a splendid headquarter in Gaza and an airport. He had a little house on the beach as well. The house was a modest unpretentious one-story bungalow. He wanted to show the people of Gaza that he was quite as ordinary as they.

However, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, felt no need for such modesty. He built a gigantic multi-story holiday house on the beach, with a grand view of the sea. If you looked behind you, from his wrap-around balcony, you could gaze on the squalor of the refugee camps beneath you that make up much of Gaza.

The people of Gaza live in deplorable conditions for the most part, rudimentary shacks of plywood covered with a tin roof. There are no amenities in their homes, not so much as indoor plumbing. They rely almost entirely on the United Nations for their most basic needs.

There is no industry in Gaza, no economy, few jobs and little hope. Altogether there is precious little to sustain the people who are unfortunate enough to find themselves imprisoned there.

Many arrived as refugees, coming by the thousands, driven by wars to the uncertain safety of this little strip of land by the sea. They did not escape the wars for long, but they could run no farther because the sea and an unfriendly Egypt were at their backs.

The people of Gaza are surrounded by the Israeli Army on three sides, with that army denying them – at its whim – the most elemental necessities for their primitive existence.

Israel, through an agreement with the Palestine Authority, controls everything beyond Gaza’s fenced-in world, making the people of Gaza completely hostage to Israel.

And Israel is now making their precarious existence unbearable. They are deliberately starving them, among other injustice and outrages. What Israel is doing might be called genocide, but there is great reluctance to name Israel as the perpetrator of genocide.

Israel does not want Gaza to exist as it is. Israel cannot afford to allow Gaza to exist. It must remove the population from Gaza, by whatever means it can and occupy that territory.

And the Palestinian Authority will do nothing to stop this. The Palestinian Authority after years of corrupt management of Gaza lost its right to govern the place to the radical Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement.

The Palestinian Authority, the Israelis or the United States will not permit Hamas to exercise power in Gaza, since Gaza is a serious threat to each if it remains under the control of Hamas. And Hamas is not going away.

When the Palestine Authority governed Gaza in the heady days immediately following the Oslo accords, traffic to and from the strip was largely un-impeded by the Israelis. Arafat used to fly in one of his helicopters in and out of his brand new airport. And Palestine Airlines made scheduled flights to Egypt and Jordan daily.

But other things happened that created great alarm to the Israelis. For one, Gaza became the hub of a stolen-car industry. High-priced automobiles were stolen in Israel and sold, or chopped up for parts, in Gaza.

And there was more. Drugs were being smuggled in from Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East through tunnel’s dug from Gaza to the Sinai.

Israel had, and has, a drug problem among its population though we do not hear much about that in the United States. The Palestine Authority thugs frequently exchanged drugs in return for weapons with the Israeli soldiers who guarded them.

Gaza was a smugglers paradise, and there was no law, or agency of the law, to intrude. In truth, the police and other law-enforcement agencies often were complicit.

I had visited Arafat on more than one occasion in Gaza during the brief honeymoon the Palestinians enjoyed with the Israelis. Entry into and out of Gaza was at first almost alarmingly easy.

I together with a member of Arafat’s staff would simply drive through the Israeli checkpoint at the border with no obstruction by the Israeli border guards. A wave of the hand from a soldier, and we went from Israel to Palestine in a flash.

A few years later, I had dinner with Arafat at his headquarters on the beach a short distance from his modest cottage, largely un-used little house. The headquarters building was several stories high, and encompassed at least two city blocks. So much for modesty.

We sat at a grand table in a room in the massive building, which provided a great view of the sea. He was grim and troubled at dinner. He told me in exasperation that there was an Israeli gunboat just over the horizon which would on occasion lob a shell onto the beach immediately in front of the building.

The Israelis were simply harassing Arafat, showing him who was boss. And he did not like that a bit. But in reality it was his fault. He did not govern Gaza, he simply let the thugs take command, and that was the beginning of the end for Gaza and its people.

Gaza went from bad to worse. Hamas promising reform, and a return to a normal society free from the intimidation of Palestinian Authority thugs, became the de facto governing entity.

Hamas rule turned out to be a mixed blessing. They did not stop the drug smuggling or the car theft. They just took the profits. Smuggling drugs into Israel to create more addicts was a form of warfare for them, and besides they made a nice buck doing it. The same was true of the car theft. And there were sundry other illegal activities they had their hands into.

And it was no longer easy to enter or leave Gaza. My later visits to see Arafat entailed far more difficulty. I could no longer just be driven in. I had to pass through a series of border checks, and once cleared, I was required to walk a few hundred yards from the Israeli border across an open no-mans land to Palestinian Gaza.

The Israelis have succeeded, to a degree, in stopping the drug smuggling, but not entirely. The stolen-car business was stopped entirely however.

When Hamas began to fire rockets into Israel that ended any pretense on the Israelis’ part that they would allow the entity of Gaza to remain as it was. Gaza was just too much trouble no matter how it was dealt with.

So Israel has closed it tight, very tight, without any regard to the consequences to the population, most of whom are innocent of any crimes against Israel.

The poor, wretched people of Gaza are as much victims as they are marginally responsible for their own difficulties. Perhaps it is apathy, perhaps it is because self-governance is so alien a concept, but they suffer manifold indignity and terrible hardship by just being in the middle.

How they are able to extricate themselves now is a rather pressing question, but their lives truly depend on it.

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THE PEACE IS OVER EDITION: ISSUE 52, VOLUME 81
GAZA MASSACRES MUST SPUR US TO ACTION
by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada






















"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rockets attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: "there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks -- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.

Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably, it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The images that stick are of Israel's foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the pictures of Livni and Egypt's foreign minister smiling and slapping their palms together.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last wednesday the Israeli "cabinet authorized the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister to determine the timing and the method" of Israel's attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza's streets red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a year.

On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel's renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.

But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?

Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it "called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it."

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do not wake up to "another Gaza" ever again.

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THE PEACE EDITION: ISSUE 51, VOLUME 80
PLAYING FOR CHANGE
by Mark Johnson & Jonathan Walls, Playing for Change



PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. The film brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.

Johnson traveled around the globe and recorded tracks for such classics as "Stand By Me" and Bob Marley's "One World" — creating a new mix in which essentially the performers are all performing together — worlds apart. Often recording with just battery-powered equipment, Johnson found musicians on street corners or in small clubs and they would in turn gather their friends and colleagues — in all, they recorded over 100 musicians from Tibet to Zimbabwe. (synopsis excerpted from Bill Moyers)

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 50, VOLUME 79
OBAMA TRIANGULATES HIS 'BASE'
by Brent Budowsky, Consortium News






















Since his election on Nov. 4, Barack Obama has appeared more interested in cultivating and appeasing political opponents than thanking the tens of millions of Americans who backed him – and building on their grassroots support.

Some Obama backers worried when he put Iraq War hawks, like Robert Gates, in key national security posts. But the choice of anti-gay pastor Rick Warren to lead the prayer on Jan. 20 was a breaking point for many others, as Brent Budowsky notes in this guest essay:

Many of the cable-television Democrats are smirking, chortling and smiling as they say how clever it was for Barack Obama to name Rick Warren to give the Inaugural invocation.

These insider Democrats believe – in the great tradition of Clintonian triangulation – that it is clever, cunning and shrewd to humiliate gays and they believe, falsely, that this will create some good will for Obama from the Christian Right that will ultimately help him.

I believe: It won’t matter anymore than keeping Bob Gates as Defense Secretary will help Obama with Republicans, unless Obama adopts Bush-like policies on Iraq.

The Rick Warren case is actually complicated. Warren is a relatively open-minded, ecumenical conservative Christian. He should be courted and respected, though I would not have chosen him for the invocation.

Something larger is at stake, which is symbolized by condescending and demeaning ridicule that is offered by some Democratic insiders, such as Peter Fenn, against some of the most loyal, faithful, long-term supporters of Obama, whom Fenn scornfully demeaned in a recent post on The Hill's Pundits Blog.

I like and respect Peter Fenn, but I believe that his post, like so many comments by cable-television Democrats, was outrageous and wrong. He referred to those concerned about some Obama moves as part of what he called the "leftist blogosphere,” and "a few disgruntled malcontents,” the "far left” and "so-called" Obama supporters.

This is the kind of utter nonsense and demeaning ridicule that we expect from Karl Rove, the Republican National Committee and Rush Limbaugh.

And I have to laugh when Fenn cites the judgment of "pundits,” "the press" and "polls.” It was the same cast of pundits and press who marched in lockstep when George W. Bush led America to a profoundly wrong war in Iraq. The Iraq War, too, had the support of the overwhelming majority of Democratic insiders who, like Fenn, looked to the polls, the pundits and the press.

Let’s get a few things straight. I, for one, am a Democratic insider, but I also believed what I wrote when I was one of the early columnists and insiders who supported Obama.

I believed what I said very publicly from before the Iowa caucus through Election Day. I am a Sam Nunn Democrat on defense with more than two decades of high-level experience working with military and intelligence people.
And I vehemently, aggressively opposed the Iraq War from the beginning because, like many in the military privately believed, it was the wrong war and a bad war.

When I opposed the war, I heard the cable-television Democrats then, as now, tell Democrats to support that war. They went to the cable shows then, as now, with their clever talk of how the pundits and the press and the polls all supported Bush on Iraq.

They told the world how it was such a clever, cunning and shrewd move for Democrats to support the war, which many did – more than 4,000 Gold Star Mothers ago.

And then, as now, the right wing, the Rove political operatives and many of the clever Democratic cable pundits attacked those who opposed the war as "lefty bloggers,” "disgruntled malcontents” and various demeaning slanders of those who turned out to be right.

I am of the center, or the center-left, not the far left, but how I describe myself should be irrelevant.

And how Peter Fenn and many of the cable-television Democrats describe those who dissent is somewhere south of laughable, except to note that many of us find it offensive that certain Democratic pundits slander and demean early and faithful supporters of Obama with the same snide condescension that the Right uses on Fox and Rush.

I believe it is valid to ask whether it is wise for Obama's secretaries of State and Defense to be among the leading supporters of the Iraq War from the beginning.

But, protest Fenn and many cable Democrats, we should have listened to what Obama said during the campaign about reaching out to rivals in a post-partisan way; we should have seen this coming.

However, did anyone hear Obama – when he talked about how the Iraq War was such a blunder of bad judgment – tell voters of Iowa that his highest national security officials would be those who supported this blunder of bad judgment?

Did anyone hear Obama tell voters of New Hampshire, when he talked of fundamental change in foreign policy, that not one early and correct opponent of the disastrous policy would be secretary of State or Defense?

This is a valid question: Is there any real accountability in a Democratic national security establishment that was so wrong about Iraq? Or is being so wrong a qualification for high office, and being right a disqualification?

What concerns me is that after a campaign for change, we see so many of the same old A-Team being brought back to power.

What concerns me is the empty chair of the incoming Obama administration, the absence of someone such as Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, or many like him who were right, early and strong on the greatest blunder in national policy since Vietnam.

What concerns me, above all, is what I see as the creeping triangulation of the Clinton style of politics, the idea that it is smart, clever politics to publicly diss your loyal supporters; that you look the other way when they are treated with contempt, condescension and ridicule, even by some Democrats who were never as early, strong and faithful supporters of Barack Obama as those expressing valid concerns.

I am a member of the Obama wing of Obama supporters and was one of the first, early, strongest and most faithful supporters of Obama. I wish the administration well, will do everything I humanly can to make it succeed, and will support Hillary Clinton and others whom I did not recommend.

But: There is too much talk of continuity for my taste, and not enough change.

Lincoln did not seek continuity with Buchanan; FDR did not seek continuity with Hoover; and Obama should seek minimal continuity, and maximum change, from the worst president in American history, George W. Bush.

So, as an early supporter of Barack Obama, I will continue to support him, but I will be damned if I will remain silent when I disagree -- or sit by silently when some of his most ardent supporters are insulted by insider Democrats practicing a strategy of political triangulation.

Those who believe that favor can be curried with the most partisan Republicans or neoconservatives by joining them in insulting the same Americans that they insult – using the same words that they use – are wrong.

Those who think that change means replacing one group of the establishment with another group of the establishment are wrong, too.

True loyalty means speaking truth to power and offering unvarnished advice clearly and with integrity. I do not support continuity for a failed security strategy or a failed economic strategy.

Change means change. I support change.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 50, VOLUME 78
V FOR VENDETTA: ADDENDUM
by The Real News Network



On Thursday night, Republicans in the US Senate succeeded in filibustering the newest draft of the $14 B auto bailout bill. The Bush Administration and Treasury Department moved quickly to assure everyone that they would not allow Chrysler and GM to fail, and that they were considering committing some of the $700 B financial bailout money to the cause. Many of the Republican senators who voted down the bill cited the United Auto Workers union as the reason for the breakdown of the bill. Oppositely, many union members have accused the senators in question of union busting. The Real News Network spoke to Mark Brenner, an expert on the US labor movement and auto industry, to get his opinion on the standoff.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 50, VOLUME 78
V FOR VENDETTA
by Malik Isasis






















There is a saying, “The strong take from the weak, and the smart take from the strong.” The Republicans are bullies, assholes—and just plain ‘ol vindictive. Even as their party dies from irrelevance, they continue to try and kill any policy that resembles helping working people.

The Republicans in the Senate have blocked the auto loans to Chrysler and GM that would have extended $14 billion in loans, but the Republicans had no plans of going along unless they were able to get a bill that would have completely destroyed the unions, and the livable wages that were fought for over decades.

The Senate Republicans then made a counterproposal under which the automakers would have been required by March 31 to reduce their debt obligations by two-thirds, an enormous sum given that GM alone has more than $60 billion in outstanding debt.

The automakers would have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees in the United States. It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked, with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging a deadline in 2011, when the current UAW contract expires.

Republicans wanted the Big Three (Ford, GM & Chyrsler) to cut their unionized wages down to the rates of Nissan, Toyota and other foreign auto makers’ non-union workers’ hourly rates in Southern states like Tennessee, and Alabama. Republicans wanted these pay cuts in 2009, expecting unionized workers making $23 an hour to make an adjustment to non-union wages of $14 an hour in a year in a matter of months...forget about mortgage, rent, transportation and food.

Republican talking points is as follows: let the Big Three declare bankruptcy to reorganize, just as the airline industry had done. The goal of a bankruptcy is another way of getting the Big Three from under the obligations to its workers, like livable wages, and benefits.

Republicans don’t care that CEOs of failing companies make hundreds of millions, however, they do get worked up over “free-market” wages of blue-collar workers who make a fraction of what their CEOs’ take home. The failure of the Big Three will hurt the economy in loss jobs, but it will definitely hurt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Detroit—all which voted for Democrats last month.

NO TIME TO PLAY

The Republicans still don’t get it, and won’t; they never do. They are bitter and entrenched in pathological ideology that is irrational on its face. This is why the Democratic Party must not adhere to the calls of governing through bi-partisanship. Republicans don’t care about nothing other than the maintenance of power, even at the expense of the country. They will cut off their noses to spite their ugly faces.

“The strong take from the weak, and the smart take from the strong.” Democrats you are weak, but it doesn’t mean you cannot beat the Republicans at their game. Obama beat them in last month’s elections, by being smarter. Understand, as Obama would say, that the Republicans are out to destroy the Democratic Party at every turn.

On January 20, 2009, you will have a trifecta of influence.

Be smart and drink their milkshake for a change.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 50, VOLUME 77
I HATE YOU, A LITTLE
by Malik Isasis



Republicans revel in their conservatism and fascism like happy pigs rooting in shit. Whenever they are in power, they never shy away from appointing conservatives, or neocons to positions of power. Yet, when the Democratic Party are in power they run from liberalism, or progressivism in an effort to be bi-partisan, which means absolutely nothing—because Republicans would rather cut their throats and watch them bleed out. Democrats put Republicans into their administration, confirming the mythology of the Democrats’ weakness.

Whenever we vote Democrats into power it is always a rain of disappointment. It is why people loath politians as much as they do. The Democrats took charge of congress in 2006. We didn’t expect that the Democrats would change a systemically-broken political system in 24 months, however, Democratic supporters weren’t expecting the Democrats to continue to give George Bush and his flying monkeys the resources of the government to continue to carry out torture, domestic spying, and expansion of the Iraq occupation, and covert military aid to Turkey in bombing Northern Iraq. The new Democratic majority, despite Americans’ strong opposition to Bush’s policies, has sustained Bush’s policy of death and fear.

The Democratic Leadership Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada have been about as affective as an extra thumb. Bush has clubbed them like baby seals, dragging their bloody corpses onto a heap of irrelevance. The spinelessness of the Democrats is why so many people are cynical about change, and voting. Democrats and Republicans are opposites of the same coin; they’ll do anything to maintain power. The Democrats are no better than their rightwing brethren if they are allowing the country to fall apart and people to die so that they can be elected. It appears this was a strategy, giving Bush enough rope not to only hang himself, but the rest of us too.

Change We Can Believe In

After eight years of George Bush, and twelve years of Republican governance I don’t have patience for Obama trying to appease any Republicans and their corporate media with so-called bi-partisanship. Bipartisanship really means Republicans get what they want and the rest of us living with the consequences of backward-looking policies.

Obama has filled his administration with neoliberals (Democratic Leadership Council), who are no better than their counterparts, neoconservatives; they both believe in neocolonialism, which means more wars, occupations and corporate destruction of unions. Just as House Leader Nancy Pelosi took impeachment of Bush off the table, Obama will take indicting Bush officials including Bush, off the table. Bush will get away with crimes against humanity.

The best predictor of past behavior is future behavior. Democrats will appease the Republicans because they are one in the same, one is just nicer, but we still get fucked in the end, so being nice doesn’t really mean shit, does it?

Shills, Operatives, and Flying Monkeys

The infiltration of corporate shills disguised as democratic consultants have driven the party out of the interests of the people and into the interests of corporate power. Just as the neoconservatives have subverted the Republican Party, neoliberals whose belief that the economy [think globalization] should be transferred from the control of the public sector to the private sector, has and is subverting the Democratic Party. Either way, we the people are left with our trousers at our ankles.

The Democratic Leadership Council (notice the page and how proud they are to be in Obama’s administration) was founded in 1985 to introduce a “third way” of winning by turning Democrats away from populism and toward globization. The DLC’s theory of winning was only reinforced when former President Bill Clinton, the council’s most well known neoliberal won two presidencies.

The DLC members read like the Who’s Who of Democrats. President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Representative Harold Ford, Jr., Senator Diane Feinstein, Senator John Kerry, well known Democratic political operative Terry McAuliffe and many more—see the list for yourself, here. Investigate any of these Democrats' records and you will find broad support of globalization, support for the Iraq invasion and occupation and corporate interests. All of these Democrats have sold their souls to become meatpuppets of the corporate lobbyists. Al Gore has since defected from the DLC and deprogrammed himself.

The DLC’s “third way” hasn’t worked in two presidential cycles [2000’s election was stolen] and four congressional cycles, yet they’re like someone playing the same numbers because it hit once. Bush and his flying monkeys fucked up so badly that the Congressional election of November 2006 the Democrats were able to limp their way into power. The Democratic consultants have pushed the Democratic Party into almost irrelevance. The leadership in the party don’t make a move without first putting a finger to the wind. Almost every choice is calculated based on a cost benefit analysis.

Susan Estrich, Pat Cadall, Juan Williams, Tammy Bruce on Fox News and a host of other Democratic consultants on CNN and MSNBC are professional bullshitters, and sellout the party roots by sustaining political status quo, in order to sustain corporate interests. They puke their bile on the airwaves day after day, after day like an airborne virus infecting, constantly infecting.

In a move to remake themselves into former President Ronald Reagan, members of the Democratic Leadership Council have created a Frankenstein monster who lacks identity. This Frankenstein monster has developed a co-dependence, it needs approval of Republicans for its esteem. The DLC and their political hackery have sacrificed the Constitution for the sake of power and the maintenance of power.

The Co-op of the Democratic Party by corporatism has completed the assimilation program by multinationals, and has illuminated the limitations of a two-party system. The use of post bi-partisanship or bipartisanship is covering the smell of shit with air freshener. The shit is still their even though you may not smell it.

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A FILM REVIEW
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
by Lisa Pease, Consortium News













“Slumdog Millionaire” may prove to be the surprise movie hit of the year. With an unlikely title, no American celebrities and a setting foreign to most people, the film is a revelation of storytelling, with compelling mysteries, well-drawn characters and a dramatically workable mix of comedy and pathos.

With an unlikely title, no American celebrities and a setting foreign to most people, the film is a revelation of storytelling, with compelling mysteries, well-drawn characters and a dramatically workable mix of comedy and pathos.

This is, simply, a "must see" film for anyone who loves a great story.

The film uses the Indian version of the TV game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" as the device to explore the history of the show's most unlikely contestant, a poor chai wallah (tea server) named Jamal Malik (played extraordinarily by Dev Patel), whose answers to the show's questions were seared into his brain through pivotal life experiences, shared with us through flashbacks.

At first, you assume this poor kid is on the TV game show for the money. But it's not until late in the film that you find his much more compelling motivation.

Based on the novel "Q&A" by Vikras Swarup, an Indian Diplomat in the Ministry of External Affairs who witnessed firsthand the poor's struggles for survival, the film takes us on a tour of how poverty tests people, and it's not pretty.

Fortunately, the humor offsets the tragedy in fine proportion.

This is no Cinderella story. When we first meet the lead character, he is being tortured in jail. But while you may wince (or worse) at times, the film also tugs insistently at your heart, like a precocious child, and you find yourself thoroughly charmed by the winning (figuratively and literally) protagonist.

And we're not alone. A woman he saved in childhood also finds herself drawn to the protagonist. How could she not be? He's eminently lovable.

The best films educate as well as entertain, and at a time when many Americans are tightening their wallets, it's good to be reminded that no matter how poor we may seem, so many live in situations far more dire than our own.

The film, however, does not preach. It simply presents the world as it is, and any lessons learned will come from your own conscience.

The film is extremely well paced. There are dramatic action scenes that move at a breakneck pace, and slower moments that allow you a glimpse into the soul of key characters.

The cinematography adds to the gritty reality of the film, but there are some breathtakingly beautiful shots as well. The direction and acting are superb, and if you love travel, you'll appreciate the sense of 'being there' you get from this film.

But ultimately, the film's greatest strength is the story itself. Compelling and fascinating, moving and entertaining, it's everything you can wish for in the cinema.

During this holiday season, dare you spend your hard-won dollars on this film? Absolutely, you should, and that's my final answer.

Lisa Pease is a historian and movie lover.

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THE SHORT FILM EDITION: ISSUE 49, VOLUME 76
SOJOURN
a short film by Jonathan Baab



Ja Baab is a friend of mine. I saw Sojourn four years ago when I was looking for a Director of Photography for my film, Urbanworld. After seeing his work, I knew that I wanted to work with him. He has a gift of looking at things from an askew lens, making simple things complicated, and complicated things, simple. Simply, he has a beautiful eye when it comes to capturing images.

Sojourn captures the everyday lives of everyday people in a small village in India. It is a meditative piece of work, which grounds you for twenty-five minutes in a way that makes you think about the excesses of Western culture, and also the extremity of poverty, and what does it mean to be happy.

- Malik Isasis

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